Question

To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians (基督教徒) ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil. So when Colu brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.

What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell. What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the man were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.

Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father's house had been the "introduction of this wonderful new fruit -- or is it a vegetable?" As late as the twentieth century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an "evil fruit".

But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. "What are you afraid of?" he shouted. "I'll show you fools these things are good to eat!" Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.

1.The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because _______.

A．it made Christians evil                    B．it was the apple of Eden

C．it came from a forbidden land              D．it was religiously unacceptable

2.What can we infer from the underlined part in Paragraph 3?

A．The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down.

B．There was little progress in the study of the tomato.

C．The tomato was still refused in most western countries.

D．Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato.

3.What is the main reason for Robert Johnson to eat the tomato publicly?

A．To make himself a hero.

B．To remove people's fear of the tomato.

C．To speed up the popularity of the tomato.

D．To persuade people to buy products from his factory.

4.What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To challenge people's fixed concept of the tomato.

B．To give an explanation to people's dislike of the tomato.

C．To present the change of people's attitudes to the tomato.

D．To introduce the establishment of the first tomato-canning factory.

 

Answer 1

【答案】

1.D

2.C

3.B

4.C

【解析】

試題分析：本文主要講的是西紅柿在剛開始進入西方社會的時候，被人們認為是禁果，不能食用。這樣的情況持續了很久，后來在一些勇敢者嘗試了以后，被人們所接受。主要講述的是人們對西紅柿的態度的轉換。

1.D 推理題。根據文章第一段For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil. So when Colu brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.可知在基督教里吧tomato當成了禁果，這主要是因為宗教方面的原因，故D正確。

2.C 推理題。根據本句Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet.可知謹慎的歐洲人仍然忽視了西紅柿，知道18世紀早期人們仍然持有這樣的觀點，也就是西紅柿是禁果，不能食用。故C正確。

3.B 推理題。根據文章最后三行"What are you afraid of?" he shouted. "I'll show you fools these things are good to eat!" Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.可知他這樣做是為了告訴人們西紅柿可以吃，是為了去除人們的偏見。故B正確。

4.C 主旨大意題。本文主要講的是西紅柿在剛開始進入西方社會的時候，被人們認為是禁果，不能食用。這樣的情況持續了很久，后來在一些勇敢者嘗試了以后，被人們所接受。主要講述的是人們對西紅柿的態度的轉換。故C正確。

考點：考查文化類短文閱讀

點評：主要講述的是人們對西紅柿的態度的轉換。測試考生在閱讀基礎上的邏輯推理能力，要求考生根據文章所述事件的邏輯關系，對未說明的趨勢或結局作出合理的推斷；或根據作者所闡述的觀點理論，對文章未涉及的現象、事例給以解釋。考生首先要仔細閱讀短文，完整了解信息，準確把握作者觀點。